Eddie Campbell

Sunday, 20 July 2008

"The point being that comic strips were far more formative than comic books. Looking at both industries today, from the perspective of an adult in their midst, I'm utterly baffled that the two media even share a common term -- "comics." I don't think they could be more different."

I've always thought of them as completely separate media and I think that to do otherwise causes a number of problems that we can well do without. (such as... oh, catch me later)

AM: Yeah, that's it – it's a nice way to get to grips with a page. As to how you lay the page out, in your suggestions to the artist, that will depend. How much room have you got? What's the pacing like? One thing to remember in comics – and this is an interesting axiom – space equals time. To convey time in a comic – it's spatial. I remember, when I was doing From Hell – I think it's the epilogue? – no, the prologue, the prologue, where I've got the prologue with just the two old guys on the beach, and I'd been doing that in just little panels because I thought, that's good, keeps it intimate, these little panels just – one of them says this, the other one says that, the next one just sits down and takes a breather – and then I thought; “Alright, I'll have one of them say: ‘Its getting cold, shall we be getting back?'”. And then I thought: “Right, they're right down by the tide line there, and actually it would take them quite a long while to walk back up the beach, and I don't just wanna suddenly jump to them on the seafront, and I don't wanna caption saying: ‘Meanwhile, shortly later…'”. So I thought alright, I'll just put a big wide panel taking up the whole tier – big picture of the beach at night – and there's these two little men, walking up the beach and the width of the panel will convey, it took a long while to do this. Alright, it will take the reader 3 seconds – 2 seconds – to actually look at the picture and take it in – there's no words in it – but it will convey time.

Unsung hero...

at the Stafford City 2.10 showing of The Dark Knight. The geezer who rushed out after a few minutes to get them to fix the screen ratio. Hey, that was Eddie Campbell. I missed what happened for a few minutes onscreen. Next time I'll just yell (it's a very polite crowd you get on a Sunday. Nobody said a word before or after.)Great movie anyway. I wonder if they looked at our (Campbell and White, writers, Bart Sears artist) version of Gotham General, a 44 page yarn in which the Joker planted a bomb in said hospital and succeeded in blowing up part of it. But for all I know maybe he tries it on once a year. You'll find it reprinted in a Batman/Joker collection titled Going Sane, on sale at the end of this month.